Intel’s “tick tock” development cycle continues to chime with the Nehalem processor architecture scheduled for production next year. Intel Senior Vice President Pat Gelsinger detailed the advanced features on the next-generation to DailyTech earlier today. In the second half of this year, Intel will release its first 45nm Penryn-based processors. While nearly identical architecturally to the Core 2 Duo processors released last year, Penryn’s 45nm node allows Intel to put more L2 cache onboard; the company already announced Penryn-based processors will utilize up to 12MB of L2 cache on quad-core designs.
Intel’s 45nm node utilizes metal transistor gates and high-k dielectrics. The departure from silicon-based transistors translates to a 5-fold reduction in source-drain leakage and a 10-fold reduction in dielectric leakage. According to Intel guidance, this means existing processors could run 20% faster just by switching to metal gate and high-k transistors. Gelsinger claims mature Penryn processors will operate in excess of 3 GHz per core, with 1600 MHz front-side busses on server platforms. After the 45nm shrink has matured, Intel will then incorporate architectural changes into its processor family, currently dubbed Nehalem. Nehalem is still a 4-issue architecture similar to Core, but new advances in management and scalability give Nehalem its new micro architecture designation. Earlier this year Intel roadmaps stated Hyper-Threading would appear on some Penryn processors. Shortly after, Intel retracted the roadmap, stating that simultaneous multi-threading will not reappear until 2008. This was made evident today when Intel unveiled its next-generation threading plans for Nehalem.
Source: DailyTech